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About PowerDesigner and the PowerDesigner plug-in</TITLE>
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<A NAME="CACCCJHE"></A><h1>About PowerDesigner and the PowerDesigner plug-in</h1>
<A NAME="TI1122"></A><h4>About PowerDesigner</h4>
<A NAME="TI1123"></A><p>PowerDesigner is a data modeling tool that supports several
types of models and many programming languages. The following modules
are available for data modeling in PowerDesigner:<A NAME="TI1124"></A>
<ul>
<li class=fi>Conceptual
Data Model (CDM) to model the overall logical structure of a data
application, independent of any software or data storage structure
considerations</li>
<li class=ds>Physical Data Model (PDM) to model the overall physical
structure of a database, taking into account DBMS software or data
storage structure considerations</li>
<li class=ds>Object Oriented Model (OOM) to model a software
system using the Unified Modeling Language (UML) notation, which
can then be generated as objects in a supported object-oriented
language such as Java or PowerScript</li>
<li class=ds>Business Process Model (BPM) to model the means
by which one or more processes are accomplished in operating business
practices</li>
<li class=ds>Free Model (FEM) to create any kind of chart diagram,
in a context-free environment
</li>
</ul>
</p>
<A NAME="TI1125"></A><h4>About the PowerDesigner plug-in</h4>
<A NAME="TI1126"></A><p>PowerBuilder includes a plug-in that provides the class diagram
functionality of the PowerDesigner OOM directly inside the PowerBuilder
development environment. </p>
<A NAME="TI1127"></A><p>When the PowerDesigner plug-in is enabled, you can link a
PowerBuilder target with a UML class diagram through a process called
reverse-engineering. You can make modifications and adjustments
to the class diagram and immediately generate those changes back
to the objects in the PowerBuilder target library.</p>
<A NAME="TI1128"></A><p>With the plug-in, you can also create a UML class diagram
from scratch (or open an existing OOM file) and generate a PowerBuilder
target using PowerDesigner menus in the PowerBuilder development
environment. The plug-in facilitates synchronization between a class
diagram and the PowerBuilder target objects that it represents.</p>
<p><img src="images/note.gif" width=17 height=17 border=0 align="bottom" alt="Note"> <span class=shaded>Requirement for enabling plug-in</span> <A NAME="TI1129"></A>You must install the PowerDesigner Object Oriented Model on
your computer before you can use the PowerDesigner plug-in for PowerBuilder.
For a list of PowerDesigner versions that are compatible with PowerBuilder,
see the PowerBuilder <i>Release Bulletin</i>
.</p>
<A NAME="TI1130"></A><h4>Enabling the plug-in</h4>
<A NAME="TI1131"></A><p>You enable the PowerDesigner plug-in through the Plug-in Manager.
The Plug-in Manager displays when you select Tools&gt;Plug-in
Manager from the PowerBuilder menu. You must select the PowerDesigner
item and click OK to enable the PowerDesigner plug-in.</p>
<A NAME="TI1132"></A><h4>Repository and online Help access</h4>
<A NAME="TI1133"></A><p>After you enable the plug-in, you can connect to the PowerDesigner Repository.
The Repository is a tool for storing versioned documents. It helps you
manage development in a multiuser environment. As in PowerDesigner, you
can right-click on a model in the tree view of the Local tab and
select menu items for Repository operations, such as Consolidate,
Update from Repository, or Compare with Repository. </p>
<A NAME="TI1134"></A><p>When you open a class diagram painter, the Repository menu
is added to the main PowerBuilder menu.</p>
<A NAME="TI1135"></A><p>If you installed online Help with PowerDesigner, that Help
is also available to the plug-in.</p>

